I shall be gazing with interest

If ever there was a non-cost-effective of obtaining a GOTO system this has to be it … Don't account for your time … remember this is amateur work in the most noble sense of that word.

MichaelG.

What does 'GOTO' mean in the astronomical world?

I now know its it a mount that make the telescope point to a particular place in the sky, but is the name GOTO because its 'goes' to where you tell it?

Just to add to the topics confusion, should this thread been in the 'build' section rather than related hobbies?

Ian P

.

Neil,

Given that the Topic is "Related Hobbies" … I think KWIL makes a valid point

"Building a GOTO mount for the Telescope" would be an exemplary title for the thread.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 14/11/2015 22:16:41

Neil, were you intending to make/adapt an ASCOM driver for it? Seems it should then be able to interface easily with all sorts of astronomy software, much of it free. One example here.

Onething..a low geared( slow) stepper might take a while to track. .

There is a limit to the steprate so this as much else (esp in engineering)Iis a compromise

I seem to be having a bad day so trying again.

I'm inclined to agree with you about ASCOM Neil. What it's actually doing is buried too deep. I'd wonder about iOptron in terms of their method of aligning especially in unfavourable conditions, if you go that far – it swing back and forth between 2 stars. Celestron like the scope pointing at the meridian. Meads horizontal and pointing north.

I use a spirit level and a compass. It's surprising how accurate that can be. What's wrong with Meade's protocol. It's compatible with just about everything and is in all of their scope manuals.

A couple you may not be aware of and both pretty powerful.

These nuts use x m l and are talking about thin clients but there is some use of a 'pi around. The other problem is that the insist people run bleeding edge Linux distro releases.

http://indilib.org/

This one is a mix and graphics are handled by a tablet. Lot's of reading on this link. The code is on sourceforge.

http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/385710-piastrohub-raspberrypi-for-autoguidingdslrgoto/

John

–

PA is ok if you can see it Neil. Dead north of me is B'ham city centre. i generally can't see it at all. If clear south is "ok".

In some ways there isn't much difference how each set up is aligned. iOptron, point at pole star and then their 2 star alignment. Done that way I assume so that the axis can be set more accurately. Vixen if I remember correctly telescope level and pointing east west. Celestron pointing at the meridian and Meade level and north south. Vixen were the first as far as I am aware to offer solar system alignment including the moon pointing out that it wouldn't be terribly accurate. They also offered a button press that could be used later once something had been centred. I think both Meads and Celestron offer much the same now. Celestron offer some gizmo that can be plugged into the scope and it will align itself. It recognises star formations. It seems they are still updating it and it wont work on equatorial mounts. They have probably nicked some open source plate solving software. The main manufacturers offers the same methods in alt az or equi. Not iOptron though – equ and alt az come with different controllers.

Really they are all just setting basic angles as a starting point. For instance if some one didn't know how to set for the merdian they could use a digital level and set the scope with that. The same could be done with iOptron for the pole star if it can't be seen. A lot of it goes back to the initial methods. The scope chooses which stars to finally align on and centres them roughly for the user to adjust. Now they usually offer a choice and 1 star, 2 stars and solar system and a later correction as per Vixen have for a long time – apart from iOptron but I would need to check that. I don't think it offers a choice of which 2 stars it will keep swing to,

The problem with iOptron is that they are the new kids on the block. All sorts of thing offer the facility to work with Meade., both old and new stuff and the protocol is simple, Not sure about Celestron protocol.

I thought the 2 links I posted might be of interest. They control goto scopes and add things like auto focus and complete remote operation including camera control. They drive the scope by sending stellar co ordinates. The 2nd link is the more interesting one. The work horse is a rasberry pi and graphics and star charts plus guidance via a tablet. It works remotely over wi fi. It uses dslr control software from the open source community and other bits and pieces from the same source. The Indi one is professional observatory stuff and uses x m l to set what a driver actually does. The driver is sort of generic and can drive anything. Great but x m l is complicate and many complain that there isn't even a decent editor available for it.

I'd guess you are aiming to say that the scope is aligned on the pole star using a polar scope and then working from that but I suspect you will still need to add corrections and the sums to go with it even then. I'm not sure if that facility is built into stellarium software. I get the impression it's built into the mount / controller.

John

–

ASCOM as it is now comes from the days of dev kits. Every software man and his dog just had to have a dev kit 'cause microsoft did them and they too masked what is actually going on. It's worse these days as C++ and various compiler outputs are supposed to document the code. There has also been a period when documentation was done by what in real terms are not software people who may not even really know what is actually going on. It leads to extremely wordy documentation that would even have page after page of the so called philosophy used to generate the code and hardly and use orientated docs at all.

John

–